controversial author Delia Owens’ popular novel, when the dialogue isn’t sanitizing abuse and rape, it’s waxing poetic about sea creatures, grass and owls.
Long stretches of floral language is OK in a book. Onscreen, however, it’s pretentious. A slog in a bog.Sure, we always love to see Daisy Edgar-Jones, the talented British actress who hit it big with the brilliant miniseries “Normal People.” But, unlike that layered show, “Crawdads” gives her nothing to chew on except a Southern accent.We first meet her character Kya as she is arrested for the murder of a man named Chase, who fell to his death from a watchtower.
To explain what happened, she tells her lawyer, an Atticus Finch-type played by David Strathairn, her overly literary life story.Little Kya (Jojo Regina) lives in a cabin far from a North Carolina town — you gotta use a boat to get anywhere — with her mom, siblings and a cruel father in the 1950s.
When they gradually all run from their dangerous situation, including no-good pop, she’s left to fend for herself. Grown up and gorgeous, she is shunned by the town like Hester Prynne and derisively called “marsh girl.” North Carolina, we learn, is a bizarro state in which beautiful, well-dressed people are hated.
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